Taint Not Thy Mind
by M.L. Shards
Summary: John doesn't really like English class all that much...


"If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not"

_Bear it not_

John curled his lips around his unused pencil, watching the teacher almost hypnotized by the fluidity of his words.

_Bear it not_

Don't just take it, don't just stand for it. Fight, take revenge, when that's done there will be peace. When one dies, time will be back to normal, things will be all right.

It was strange how stupid that philosophy sounded coming from someone completely different.

He'd lived with that ideal ever since he'd escaped the first machine after him. Kill the creator of Skynet, and everything will be fine. Millions won't die, you won't have to be a messiah, and the world will keep spinning around, and life will be puppy dogs and rainbows and maybe he might even be able to avoid going to an asylum with educated men in clean white coats arguing over the cause of his "delusions".

He needed to fight, be maybe there wasn't an end as simple as he'd hoped. If he was alive, then the future was set, because if he was alive, then his father had to come back through time and if his father came back, it was to protect his mother from the Terminator, meaning that the Terminator had to exist if he did. There was no other way.

"But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind-"

_Taint not thy mind_

Don't go crazy while on the path to set things right. Keep your head, be calm, be cool, be a leader and things will be fine.

There were days he wondered if he hadn't lost his mind already and that there wasn't a robot, masquerading as his sister, sitting behind him and he really did have a sister, that maybe he was from Lawrence, Kansas, and his father was a police officer who died and his name wasn't Connor, and his mother really was a nut…

But he couldn't bring himself to believe that, because as soon as he was almost to that point the flashbacks of liquid metal, and the news reports on his foster parents came back, and that fact he was in 2007 with no memory of anything passed 1999 and that whole theory flew out the window.

He let out a sigh, feeling strangely confined in the large classroom as the English teacher (he never bothered to learn teacher's names anymore, inevitably he'd be gone before it really mattered) continued on in his soliloquy, not hearing the yawns of students, or noticing the bite marks appearing on the pencil, carefully place in John's mouth.

He looked back at Cameron who stared blankly ahead. No doubt she had this whole thing in her programming and could quote it at anytime. He briefly wondered if she had a sleep mode, like a screensaver or something, but tore himself away from those thoughts.

"-nor let thy soul contrive, against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven"

_Leave her to heaven_

What about all the people who were dying in order to keep him alive? Or after, in the future, how many to protect him? The thoughts made him sick.

He'd been injured many times, once, he'd smashed his nose into a door and had his first taste and smell of blood at a very young age. It was the feeling of that filling up his senses, making him ill. What happened when the smell and taste wasn't of his own?

He shuddered, a move not unnoticed by Cameron, who brushed her hand across the back of his neck. He heard one of the boys in the back laughing at this.

He knew she was just scanning, but it was a strange act for a sister to do to her brother. It was almost sensual, but the small touch, no matter how fake the skin and warmth was, gave him a small bit of comfort.

"O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell?"

John slid the pencil out of his mouth, watching as the teacher switched rolls, assigning various lines to various people. He could feel his consciousness slipping as his mind wandered to thoughts of the future. He tried to suppress them, but the lines seemed to each job different ideas.

People bleeding, children's eyes looking at him, begging to save them, begging him to do something and future John, with his dark hair and military jacket could only watch in horror and confusion, unsure of what to do. He could only watch images of people burning, bones littering playgrounds, of humans and punishment. He saw images of torture and betrayal, dogs being the only key to telling what an illusion was and what was a reality. It gave him chills as thoughts of death played over and over.

He closed his eyes as tear threatened to spill out. He wanted to leave now. And he could hear Cameron tapping on her desk, impatiently wanted to follow her orders and make him happy, but aware she was unable to.

The teacher continued, picking a few students to play various rolls along the way and John knew this was going to be a very, very long unit in class.

The act came to an end and the teacher spoke his final lines "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!"

John let out a sigh. "Amen."

* * *

I don't own Hamlet or SCC…. Really. Please review. 


End file.
